Premier League after six matches: the top four line falls from 109 to 107, Brighton get 2 points to spare, nothing is clinched

Brighton went into round six with a top four clinch number that let them drop nothing: 99 of the 99 points still on their schedule. They come out of it needing 94 of 96, two points to spare. They won 2-0 at Sunderland on October 10, but a win alone buys no room: with the line still at 109, Brighton's 13 points plus everything left would come to exactly 109. What moved it is that the four clubs on 9 points, whose shared ceiling of 108 set the line, all dropped points. Brentford and Everton drew, Leeds and Liverpool lost, and the line for every club came down from 109 to 107.

Everything here is as of the October 13 update. Sixty of the season's 380 matches are in, all 20 clubs have played six and have 32 left, worth up to 96 points each, so there are still no games in hand anywhere in the division. The round ran from October 10 to October 13, Korean time, home side first: Arsenal 2-1 Leeds, Ipswich 2-1 Fulham, Aston Villa 2-2 Brentford, Chelsea 5-1 Bournemouth and Sunderland 0-2 Brighton on the 10th, Manchester United 1-1 Tottenham, Crystal Palace 3-1 Nottingham Forest and Hull City 2-2 Everton on the 11th, Liverpool 0-3 Manchester City on the 12th and Coventry 4-1 Newcastle on the 13th. The next round starts on October 17.

A top four line has to clear the fourth highest ceiling among a club's rivals, and a rival who can only finish level still counts as a threat. Before the round that fourth ceiling was 108. Now the highest ceilings below the top three are 106 apiece: Brentford and Everton after their draws, and Chelsea after the 5-1 win over Bournemouth. One above that is 107. Leeds and Liverpool are down to 105, level with Hull City and Ipswich, and Newcastle, beaten 4-1 at Coventry, to 104. The same three clubs hold the only top four numbers, and all three won: Manchester City need 89 more, Arsenal 92 and Brighton 94, and added to 18, 15 and 13 points that is 107 each time. Our September 21 piece put what they could drop at 5, 2 and nothing. It is now 7, 4 and 2.

The title line did not move the same way. Manchester City won 3-0 at Liverpool, have six wins from six and 18 points, and need 94 more. That is still a finishing total of 112, because Arsenal beat Leeds 2-1 and can still reach 111, so City have exactly the 2 points to spare they had before, now out of 96 instead of 99. Nobody else carries a title number: Brighton's ceiling is 109 and City's is 114. In the other direction Arsenal's title tragic number is 32, every match they have left, Brighton's is 31, and the shortest in the table is Fulham's 27.

At the bottom, the one total that every safety number points at fell from 103 to 100. Three clubs go down, so the bar sits one above the third lowest ceiling in the division, and the three lowest are now Fulham on 98 and Bournemouth and Tottenham on 99. Before the round the third lowest was the 102 shared by Bournemouth and Coventry. Our piece on the relegation numbers said anything short of a Coventry win at home to Newcastle would take Coventry below 102. Coventry won 4-1, kept the 102, and with the bar now under it they carry a safety number of 94. Bournemouth lost 5-1 at Chelsea and are down to 99. The same piece said Fulham would get a number back only by winning while the bar fell to 101 or lower. The bar fell to 100, but Fulham lost 2-1 at Ipswich and their ceiling is 98.

Seventeen clubs now carry a safety number, up from sixteen, and every one of them adds to 100: Manchester City 82, Arsenal 85, Brighton 87, Brentford, Everton and Chelsea 90, and so on down to Nottingham Forest and Aston Villa at 95. Sunderland's 96 is every point they have left, just as their 99 was before the 2-0 defeat to Brighton. Crystal Palace also held a 99 and beat Forest 3-1, and theirs is 93. Bournemouth, Tottenham and Fulham have none, and all three carry a relegation tragic number of 32, every match they have left. Before the round only Fulham and Tottenham had one, and it was 33.

The top four tragic column grew from thirteen clubs to fourteen. Leeds and Liverpool each picked up a 32, because six clubs now have more than their 9 points. Chelsea lost the 33 they had, because their 10 points put them level with Brentford and Everton and only three clubs are above that. Our Leeds piece said a defeat at Arsenal would leave Leeds on 9 with a ceiling of 105, and that is where they are. The column reads 32 for Leeds, Hull City, Liverpool, Ipswich, Newcastle and Crystal Palace, 31 for Manchester United, Coventry, Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa and Sunderland, and 30 for Bournemouth, Tottenham and Fulham.

Nothing is settled at either end. No club has a zero in any of the six columns, and every club's reachable range still runs from first to twentieth. The next round cannot change that either. Run all 59,049 combinations of its ten results through the engine and no clinch number and no tragic number reaches zero, every range still reads first to twentieth, and the shortest tragic number anywhere is 25.

The next round runs from October 17 to October 20, Korean time. Manchester City host Ipswich on the 17th. A win or a draw keeps their title line in every combination, and a defeat keeps it only if Arsenal fail to win at Nottingham Forest on the 19th. City's and Arsenal's top four lines survive every combination. Brighton host Crystal Palace on the 18th. A win or a draw keeps their 94, and a defeat keeps it unless Brentford beat Liverpool and Everton against Chelsea, both on the 17th, has a winner. A fourth top four line can appear in the same round. Chelsea get one with a win at Everton as long as Brentford do not beat Liverpool, and Everton get one the same way with a win over Chelsea. Brentford get one by beating Liverpool if Everton and Chelsea draw.

At the bottom, Bournemouth host Sunderland on the 18th. Sunderland's 96 survives a win. A draw keeps it only if Fulham fail to beat Hull City and Tottenham fail to beat Coventry, and a defeat ends it. Bournemouth can get a safety number only by winning, and a win gives them one unless Tottenham beat Coventry while Aston Villa avoid defeat at Newcastle and Nottingham Forest avoid defeat at home to Arsenal. Their relegation tragic number goes with a win and stays with anything else, and Tottenham's works the same way. Tottenham host Coventry on the 20th, the last match of the round. Only a win gives them a safety number, 93, every match they would have left, and it appears if Bournemouth and Sunderland draw, or Aston Villa lose at Newcastle, or Forest lose to Arsenal. Fulham, at home to Hull City on the 17th, cannot get a safety number this round, and their tragic number can go only if they win, and not in every combination even then.

How to read these numbers. A clinch number is the minimum a club must still collect for an outcome to be guaranteed even if every rival wins every remaining match. A tragic number is how many more defeats make an outcome impossible even if the club wins everything else. A reachable range is the highest and the lowest finishing place still arithmetically open. On ties, a rival who can only draw level with a club is still counted as a threat to it, so our clinch can trail an official announcement by a day, while in the other direction a rival has to finish clearly above a club to eliminate it and drawing level is not enough. Goal difference, head to head records and the league's own tiebreakers are not part of the calculation, and every line in this piece moves with other clubs' results as well as the club's own. The table is at, the remaining fixtures at, the qualification and relegation rules at, every club's clinch and tragic numbers at, the method at, and a single club's lines on its own page, such as Brighton's or Sunderland's. To run next weekend's results through yourself, use.